Wits University is giving students 30GB of free data for the lockdown

Wits University has announced that students will receive 30GB of data (10GB Anytime & 20GB at night) if they are registered with any of the country’s four main networks – MTN, Vodacom, Cell C or Telkom.

The university said that this service is at no cost to students and is valid for one month until 20 May.

A BusinessTech reader who is a student at Wits said that she received an SMS about the free data on her personal number on Sunday (19 April).

She added that students have been encouraged to use the data for online learning, but confirmed that there does not appear to be any limitations on what the data may be used for.

The majority of the country’s schools and universities were closed due to social distancing measures even before the country’s five-week lockdown came into effect.

Because of the prolonged break, a number of the country’s universities have already indicated that they will continue with online courses for the rest of the semester.

Wits University said that it would effectively ‘reopen‘ online as of Monday (20 April), as it prepares for its second block of teaching.

However, it indicated that not all courses would be available due to inherent limitations. There are specific disciplines that may be patient-based, laboratory-based, studio-based or involve creative practices that cannot be undertaken online, it said.

“To be clear, the university is not transitioning to a permanent online modality for all courses, nor are we becoming a correspondence institution,” it said.

“We are instituting an emergency remote teaching and learning programme as one measure that will help us to minimise the time lost in the academic project.”

Government is expected to formalisea plan to help save the university year by the end of the week.